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Thursday, January 31, 2008

Party time

Went to the party at a village hall on Saturday night. Did a lot of washing up. I mean a lot. Dinner for around 55 people is a lot of washing up but I felt obliged. There is a tradition in my family that if you go to someone's house for lunch or dinner you wash up afterwards. I think it is in small print somewhere in the Catholic housewives' handbook - "A good guest washes up after themselves". It comes somewhere between: "Do not commit adultery with the priest" and "Remember to take your temperature." After I finished scouring the last pan, I went out to the party proper and sat down with a whoomph on one of the red velveteen seats to catch my breath and admire the ceilidh dancing. I had been sitting down for about five minutes when a merrymaker came up to me and said: "Not joining in?" I felt like saying: "I am sitting down for the first time in an hour and a half. Exactly how joined in do you want me to be?" I did eventually dance. I hoisted my two-year-old daughter to balance on my boots, she reached up her arms, turned her smiling face to the skies and we walzed. Her tartan-netted party dress frothing between and around my legs, small hands in mine we twirled and turned. A mother and daughter in time. There must have been music.

Memo to anyone coming to my house, please do not do the washing up, as that makes me feel obliged to at least join you in the kitchen if not take up a cloth and do some drying. And if you'd seen how these Americans wash up, you'd be of the exact same opinion!

When I was young,I loved listening to my Mom, Aunts,Grandmothers, the women cleaning up in the kitchen after some occasion, there was so much fun talk and laughter, as an adult I have grown close to many friends as we wash up after a gathering, and nothing beats the memories of dancing with my daughter when she was two!!(now she is 22!)

why is it the women washing up, you are reinforcing gender stereotypes. What examples are you setting to the boys and girls coming up.Guests dont wash up in my house,my husband does.I cook he sorts. If he cooks I sort. But then he is not british, scandanavians have a much better gender balance, no pink jobs and blue jobs there.